…, and their Effects on Strategy (Part 1)
"I'd like to follow up on Bryan's post from this part March about how the Navy's intention to end Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) procurement in FY15—several years earlier than previously planned, and nearly a decade before the TLAM's successor reaches Initial Operational Capability—is inescapably fraught with risk. As Bryan correctly observed, should the U.S. be drawn into one or more conflicts during this gap period, it would be impossible to replace TLAMs expended in combat. Nor could the U.S. grow the TLAM inventory during peacetime if strategically necessary; other combat arms would have to assume a greater share of the land-attack load. The resultant risks would be evident to allied and potential adversary leaders alike, perhaps with concomitant effects on American conventional deterrence credibility.
Bryan's most important points, however, regarded guided munitions-age warfare in general:
"It is not 1939. We do not have endless untapped industrial capacity that will build 50,000 airplanes and 6000 ships and boats. We have limited production lines in incredibly high-tech factories that rely on a precious supply of skilled workers who are not reproducible overnight. Any war with another major power will expend PGM's at a rate our industrial base will strain to replace."…"
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(Part 2.)
"Based on our discussion yesterday, it should be evident that a military's strategic concept's viability leans heavily on guided conventional munitions' peacetime inventory sizes and wartime producibility. For instance, if a military's force structure and operating concepts overwhelmingly depended upon employment of state-of-the-art standoff-range guided munitions, then there are two basic strategic paths it might pursue.
The first is that it might ‘go for broke,' as those munitions' inventory and producibility limitations would incentivize seeking a quick and decisive strategic victory. Should the resultant campaign(s) fail to achieve this, however, there might not be enough munitions left in the inventory to achieve desired political objectives—let alone thwart a resilient and intelligent opponent's countermoves…."
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Amicalement
Armand
